Jim Williams -- Analog Man -- Book Review: "Analog Circuit Design -- Art, Science, and Personalities"

 

Jim Williams at his bench.  Note the mess. 

The Bob Pease book that KD4EBM gave me led me to the Jim Willams book entitled Analog Circuit Design -- Art, Science, and Personalities.  I'm only about a quarter of the way through it, but I can already tell that it is great.  Get this book.   Make room on your shelf.   

Jim was the editor, and it is a collection of contibutions made by a many different analog luminaries.  Curiously, none of the bios show that there are any hams among them (but the articles of many of them seem to hint at ham radio backgrounds).  MIT shows up a lot in the bios.  Jim notes in the very first line of the preface that "This is a weird book."   He talks about how it came together -- he met with the contributors and each of them pledged NOT to consult with the others about what they would write.  Jim notes that the result is "a somewhat discordant book," that "Hopefully would lend courage to someone seeking to do analog work." " The single greatest asset a designer has is self knowledge."  "Take what you like, cook it any way you want to, and leave the rest."  Indeed. 

I found that Jim's own contributions were among those that I liked the most. He writes about "analoggery" and "digital fakery"  but then acknowledges that this is a "good natured" controversy.  He notes that "no true home is complete without a lab" (a shack?) and that "no lab is complete without an HP series 200 oscillator."  His bio reveals that he lived in California with his family and "14 Tektronix oscilloscopes."   In a chapter entitled "Should Ohm's Law be Repealed?" Jim describes the very early influence of a neighbor, Dr. Stearn,  who owned a Tek 535.  It allowed them to see into circuits:  "You knew the excitement Leeuwenhoek felt when he looked in his microscope."  But that was not always enough:  Jim tells how Stearn once successfully troubleshot one of Jim circuits simply by running moistened fingers over circuit while watching the scope. 

Tom Hornak also really struck a chord with me. He writes of things that happened in the year "10 BT" (Before Transistors).  He talks about how he and a childhood friend had trouble understanding the differences between voltage and current.  "We found someone who knew the right answer, but he did not help us too much. Instead of using a simple analog such as a phasor diagram, he started to talk sine and cosine. We accused him of not knowing the answer either, and covering up his ignorance my muttering mumbo-jumbo."  Tom explaines:  "I know that trying to 'understand electricity' early in life had a lasting benefit to me. I got used to 'seeing electricity' in analogs and I am still seeing it that way. I believe every electronic circuit designer could benefit from thinking in analogs, and it is never too late to start. This belief made me write this chapter."  

Barrie Gilbert -- the man credited with inventing the Gilbert Cell (the heart of the NE602) -- has a chapter in the book.  He writes of circuits "laid out Manhattan-style" and "built on softwood bases." He hombrewed a very early TV receiver. He tested AF amplifiers "by placing a finger on the grid of the first tube."  (We recommended something similar with the SolderSmoke Direct Conversion Receiver, but some builders seemed not to believe that this would work!)    

It is undoubtedly a tragedy that we lost both Jim Willams and Bob Pease in June 2011. Jim died of a stroke at age 63; Bob died of a possible heart attack or stroke while driving home from Jim's memorial service. But here we are in 2025 still talking about their work and their books. In a certain sense they live on through their writing.  This is a lesson and an inspiration for those of us who sometimes get a bit down by the vagaries of AI and the algorithms:  We never know when -- perhaps long after we are gone -- someone might come across something we have written and find inspiration there.  

Three cheers for Jim and Bob.   

https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2025/10/troubleshooting-analog-circuits-by-bob.html

https://www.jameco.com/Jameco/workshop/inthenews/pease.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqCC_QLhohtE3--OhGRLuQ0kQDyAq0rDsRhkdQDeIeZmGZs7nvN

https://www.edn.com/analog-engineering-legend-bob-pease-killed-in-car-crash/

The Audio Archivists: "Somewhere Between Hard Science and Garage Alchemy"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/arts/music/iron-mountain-audio-tape-preservation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5k8.-ksX.71L7e9Is_3LN&smid=url-share

Grote Reber -- W9GFZ -- Radio Astonomy Pioneer, Homebrew Hero

First off, what a great name. It is a real ham radio name.  Grote Reber.  And he was indeed a ham:  W9GFZ.    We don't have names like that anymore.  But we should. 

Second, Grote Reber's mother was also the teacher of Edwin Hubble. Hubble was the guy who discovered that there were OTHER GALAXIES in the universe, and that they were all moving away from each other.  That was a BIG discovery!   Later, Grote's mom also had her son in her class.  Both students were from Wheaton, Illinois.  

Lest there be any doubt about Grote's dedication to radio, consider the following.  (Much of the following comes from Wikipedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grote_Reber) 

When he learned of Karl Jansky's work in 1933,^[5][6][7] Grote Reber decided this was the field he wanted to work in, and applied to Bell Labs, where Jansky was working.

Pioneer of Radio astronomy

Reber Radio Telescope in Wheaton, Illinois, 1937

In the summer of 1937, Reber decided to build his own radio telescope in his back yard in Wheaton, Illinois. Reber's radio telescope was considerably more advanced than Jansky's, and consisted of a parabolic sheet metal dish 9 meters in diameter, focusing to a radio receiver 8 meters above the dish. The entire assembly was mounted on a tilting stand, allowing it to be pointed in various directions, though not turned. The telescope was completed in September 1937.^[8][9]

Here is a really great article from Sky and Telescope magazine (July 1988) about Reber's homebrew radio telescope:  

http://jump.cv.nrao.edu/dbtw-wpd/Textbase/Documents/grncr071988a.pdf  

He was limited by the size of locally available 2X4 lumber.  Neighbors thought he was trying to control the weather or to bring down enemy aircraft.  Between Wheaton and the NRAO site in West Virginia, Reber's telescope spent some time at the National Bureau of Standards site in Sterling, Virginia.  I was in Sterling just yesterday.  I wonder if there is a plaque or something noting the telesccope's stay in that town.  I note that at age 15, Reber had built a ham radio transceiver. 

AND THEN HE MOVED TO TASMANIA

He did this because of propagation and low noise conditions.  (This reminds me of how we sometimes said that very few people have actually said the words, "And then we moved to the Azores.")

Starting in 1951, he received generous support from the Research Corporation in New York, and moved to Hawaii.^[12] In the 1950s, he wanted to return to active studies but much of the field was already filled with very large and expensive instruments. Instead he turned to a field that was being largely ignored, that of medium frequency (hectometre) radio signals in the 0.5–3 MHz range, around the AM broadcast bands. However, signals with frequencies below 30 MHz are reflected by an ionized layer in the Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere. In 1954, Reber moved to Tasmania,^[12] the southernmost state of Australia, where he worked with Bill Ellis at the University of Tasmania.^[13] There, on very cold, long, winter nights the ionosphere would, after many hours shielded from the Sun's radiation by the bulk of the Earth, 'quieten' and de-ionize, allowing the longer radio waves into his antenna array. Reber described this as being a "fortuitous situation". Tasmania also offered low levels of man-made radio noise, which permitted reception of the faint signals from outer space.

His Homebrew House in Tasmania

In the 1960s, he had an array of dipoles set up on the sheep grazing property of Dennistoun, about 7.5 km (5 miles) northeast of the town of Bothwell, Tasmania, where he lived in a house of his own design and construction he decided to build after he purchased a job lot of coach bolts at a local auction. He imported 4x8 douglas fir beams directly from a sawmill in Oregon, and then high technology double glazed window panes, also from the US. The bolts held the house together. The window panes formed a north facing passive solar wall, heating mat black painted, dimpled copper sheets, from which the warmed air rose by convection. The interior walls were lined with reflective rippled aluminium foil. The house was so well thermally insulated that the oven in the kitchen was nearly unusable because the heat from it, unable to escape, would raise the temperature of the room to over 50 °C (120 °F). His house was never completely finished. It was meant to have a passive heat storage device, in the form of a thermally insulated pit full of dolerite rocks, underneath, but although his mind was sharp, his body started to fail him in his later years, and he was never able to move the rocks. He was fascinated by mirrors and had at least one in every room.

To Canada -- And a Rejection of the Big Bang

The same July 1988 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine has a good historical vignette of Reber, with a focus on his actvities in Canada late in life (click on the image below).     Reber had big doubts about the big bang.  Unfortunately this seemed to spill over into scorn and ridicule for those who -- well -- believed in the big bang.  We see this at the end of the article. Oh well, even great people sometimes get cranky.  

Three cheers for Grote Reber. 

I had trouble making the WayBack Machine links to work on my blog.  But they seem to work on the Wiki page.  So to see them, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grote_Reber  Then go to the Reference section and take a look at the second and third items.  

Book Review: "Big Ear Two -- Listening for Other-Worlds" by John Kraus (1995)

This book is kind of weird, but give it a chance.  The author seems too prone to describe the physical attributes of his colleagues, especially female colleagues.  But he was born in 1910 -- he was an old guy when he wrote this book, so perhaps we should cut him some slack.   And there is one memorable episode where he defends a female applicant.  In spite of the shortcomings, there are many real gems in there, often hidden among the descriptions of 1930's era Kleenex machines and refrigerators.  I picked up the book a long time ago and only read it recently.   

Some highlights: 

-- Crystal Radios in the 1920s. 

--  Working Australia from Michigan on 40 CW in 1927. And waking up his parents to tell them. (Decades later, I did the same thing after a ZL contact).

 

-- Doing a radio propagation survey using the 5 meter band (FMLA!) 

-- Jansky's  discovery of an extraterrestrial hiss in 1932.  (It seems like that was the big discovery,  So why did Penzias get the Nobel prize?) 

-- A youthful trip to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. 

-- A regular ham band schedule from Ann Arbor to Berkeley that featured Ernest Lawrence and Robert Oppenheimer.

 

-- Lots of mention of Fred Terman,  Grote Reber, and Karl Jansky,

 

-- Some discussion of how Jansky was turned down for a job.  And about how being a radio amateur actually hurt chances for employment; there are a few lines about anti-ham prejudice. 

-- Lots of people known to us show up in the book:  Joe Taylor, Shoemaker and Levy of Shoemaker-Levy 9 fame, Arthur C. Clarke, Maarten Schmidt of "First Light," and many others.   

-- And of course, the WOW signal (that has recently been explained as probably having a natural origin).  

-- Kraus tells of how the Latin words "Ad Astra per Aspera" (to the stars, with difficulty) were engraved above their radio telescope receiving room.  He goes on to (correctly) criticize those who write about radio telescopes, without having ever built one.  Remarkinig on one such critic, John Bolton, a revered Austialian radio astronomer and radio telescope builder, wrote, "If the writer had built a radio telescope his story of radio astronomy would be a different story." 

Here is a good review of Kraus's "Big Ear Two" book: 

https://reeve.com/Documents/Book%20Reviews/Reeve_Book%20Review-Big%20Ear%20Two.pdf

Jay KI5VIR's FB Homebrew SolderSmoke Direct Conversion Receiver

Jay KI5VIR is a new ham, but you would never know this by looking at his build of the direct conversion receiver: It looks like something built by someone with a lot more time the amateur ranks. (See above.) 

Jay writes: 

I have completed the direct conversion reciever and I can't thank Bill, Dean and those that commented and asked questions on discord enough. This was my first build and I can't believe how much I learned. I have a long ways to go,  but this was just what I needed to get started in homebrewing.  1- (BIGGEST CHALLENGE)  was probably the diode ring mixer and learning to use my scope and setting it up to test the circuit. (this was also the most rewarding stage) 2-(WHAT DID YOU LEARN AND WHAT WAS YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE?) I got a basic understanding of how to read a circuit and what different components do in the circuit.(I still want to revisit each stage and make sure I get a little more) 3-(WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO HOMEBREW NEXT?) I want to first dissasemble each board and rebuild while it is fresh in my mind and make sure I get a little better understanding. After that, I want to either build a transmitter to go with this reciever, or build a complete transciever. Not sure whether to build ssb or cw, but I definately want to build something I can make at least a few contacts with. 

 Congratulations Jay, and welcome to the Hall of Fame! 

Dave AA7EE's Beautiful (Typically Beautiful) SolderSmoke Direct Conversion Receiver

Dave Richards AA7EE is justifiably famous in homebrew circles for the beautiful photographs of his rigs, and for the superb documentation of his builds.  You will see what I mean when you visit his blog: 

https://aa7ee.wordpress.com/   

We were very pleased when Dave told us he would build the direct conversion receiver that we have been discussing on Discord. 

Dave writes: 

Phew! Well this was a bit of a journey, and a slightly humbling experience. I looked at the schematic and thought, "Hey, I can build this. Shouldn't be too hard!" But the homebrew Gods judged that it was time to remind me of my place in the big scheme of things, by imbuing my receiver with in-band breakthrough from SSB, CW, and digi stations. Strong in-band stations within about 50KHz were breaking through and being heard in the same way that you'd hear SSB, CW, and digi signals on an AM receiver without a BFO. Their pitch wasn't changing as I tuned, because they had no pitch. Bill suggested that RF was getting into places it wasn't supposed to be, and being envelope detected by the AF amp. As it turned out, he was right. If anyone's interested, I can post a video of the issue I was experiencing. In the meantime though, I'll keep this post brief. I have quite a lot of pictures from various stages of the build, but posting them all here might be a bit TMI. I wanted to make this receiver reasonably compact and build all the stages on one board. My near-pathological tendency to try and build things fairly small could have contributed to the breakthrough problem that I experienced. I won't go into all the details of the troubleshooting process here, unless people are really interested, though I'll detail them in a post on my blog, as I think that sharing this stuff can be helpful to other builders - just as I have benefited greatly from others sharing with me. I made a few small changes from the original schematic, to cure the issues I was experiencing. Will detail them in another comment underneath, as the free version of Discord puts a character limit on posts.

I made the following small changes, to cure a couple of issues this little receiver was experiencing - 1) The AF amp was motorboating at anything above about medium volume, so I swapped out the 47µF capacitor in the +ve supply line to the AF amp (C10) for a 470µF part. This killed the motorboating dead in it's tracks. 2) To solve the in-band breakthrough issue, I did two things - a) At the suggestion of Peter VK3TPM, I placed a 1K resistor in the +ve supply line to the first AF amp stage, Q5, between C15 and R8. In conjunction with C15, this forms a lowpass filter with a 3dB cutoff point at about 3Hz. With a 12V supply, ~3.5V is dropped across this resistor and at 9V, the voltage drop is ~2.3V. If this voltage drop is too much for you, you can try a lower value of resistor and perhaps increasing the value of C15. This voltage drop does decrease the gain of the stage a little. In my case, it was welcome, as the amp was tipping over into feedback at full volume. Adding the resistor eliminated this, so I can now run the AF gain pot at full tilt. b) I added a 0.22µF capacitor from the wiper of the AF gain pot to ground, as an RF bypass. Physical placement of this cap was close to Q5. It also shapes the audio a little, cutting out some of the high-frequency hiss. You can experiment with different values here. I was initially going to use a 0.1µF part, but 0.22µF provided better protection. Greater values cut out too many of the higher frequencies for my liking. For a relatively simple receiver like this, I like the wide open sound.

I removed the spring from the tuning shaft. Tuning is smoother now, and free from backlash.

Dave 

AA7EE 

Here is a video of Dave's receiver inhaling CW during the CW Sweepstakes contest:

Here is one of Dave's iconic photos of the receiver:   

Thanks Dave!  Congratulations and welcome to the Hall of Fame!  

California Typewriter -- Full Movie with Tom Hanks

I think this one is a bit over the top.  They are way too interested in the old typewirters.  The artist who destroys the old machines to make robots and sculptures... the "musical group" that plays songs on old typrwriters... all the people who decry modern digital tech, but then create internet pages that save the old typewriter shops.   But hey, who am I to criticize them?  Some readers really liked the New York Times article on the Bremerton Typewriters Company.  And there is a lot of overlap between these typrewriter fanatics and the many shades of  ham radio fanaticism (boatanchor-oligists, I'm looking at you!)  So here (above) is the full movie.  

One personal note:  My paternal grandmother was part of that original typewriter revolution - she remained proud all of her life of hwer ability to use that machine.  She kept her own typewriter in her house all of her life. And she used it. 

There are  a LOT of YouTube videos about old typewriters and workshops that service them.  Here is one about the last typewriter shop in Melbourne, Australia: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxx6ZutCU5w

 

A Great Story about the Benefits of Repairing Old Gear -- The Bremerton Typewriter Company

Listen to this in its audio form.  Maybe follow along with the (type?)written text.  Enjoy the pictures and the videos and -- above all -- the message.  

This wonderful article has a lot to say about the value of repairing -- and knowing how to repair -- old gear.  Not just typewriters, although that is very cool.  But this article also pertains to old boatanchor ham gear, and to the skills needed to homebrew rigs today. And it says a lot about mentorship. 

I really liked this story.

 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/20/us/typewriter-repair-seattle-bremerton.html?unlocked_article_code=1.208.N367.53DGZGZ8oPIm&smid=url-share

How VU2RM Got Into the Satellites

 

Readers will remember last week's post about the homebrew rivalry between VU2RM and VU2NR. (Note the bio about VU2RM below).  This morning Farhan sent me this article from a 1970s-era Indian ham radio magazine in which VU2RM describes his early efforts to get onto the satellites. I also tried during the mid 1970s, but I didn't have the kind of magic decoder ring provided (via QSL!)  by OH2RK.  My satellite success had to wait some 20 years, until I was in the Dominican Republic.  More on this below the VU2RM article. 

This morning I replied to Farhan's email:  

Very cool Farhan.  I see that Pete may have an Indian rival for "most SSB transceivers built."  

I got into the satellites during my 1992-1996 stay in the Dominican Republic.   At first, we had no way to get the up-to-date Keplerian elements to predict satellite passes.  Then Compuserve opened up. I had to telephone Miami from the DR to get the Keps.  I ran up a huge phone bill. 

I too built an antenna for these contacts.  Mine was the 2 meter portion of a 144/440 MHz project from 73 magazine called "The Ray-Gun".  I built mine out of scrap lumber and refrigerator tubing.  I still have these elements!  I used them in the beam that I built to listen for YOUR satellite!   In the DR, elevated the thing by 45 degrees and pointed it in the general direction of the satellite.  

RS-11 had a very cool robot aboard.  If you called it just right, it would issue you a serial number.  I have the QSL.

Here are some articles about our satellite adventures.  

https://www.gadgeteer.us/ASTRO.HTM

BTW, Luis Ernesto HI8LEZ visited me during summer 2024 in the DR! 

My hombrew 2 meter beam in the Dominican Republic

Internet Archive / Wayback Machine in an Old Church in San Francisco

 

Three cheers for the Internet Archive!  Among its millions or trillions of things saved, there is the SolderSmoke podcast and blog.  

Check out the CNN video: 

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/16/business/video/internet-archive-wayback-machine-church-digvid

HAARP Test 17 -- 22 November 2025

 

Details here (click on November 2025): https://haarp.gi.alaska.edu/transmissions

Submit signal reports here:  https://haarp.gi.alaska.edu/form/reception-reports

Early SSB in India: Espionage, Stolen Secrets, and Kleptomania

 

Earlier this month I had stumbled across a 1964 QST article entitled "A Sideband Transceiver, VU2 Style."  I forwarded the link to Pete N6QW, Grayson KJ7UM, and to Farhan VU2ESE.  Last night Farhan sent me this insider look at early SSB in India.  It is really great.  The battle for preeminence among early SSB homebrewers in India reminds me a bit of Jean Shepherd's descriptions of homebrew radio in Hammond, Indiana.   Farhan's description of the early rigs being "all over the place, in about 3 or 4 boxes... with a whole lot of  wires running all over"  really resonated with me -- yes, even today, that is true homebrew. Thank you Farhan for sharing this with us. 

Farhan writes: 

VU2NR, Raju was a legend! Quirky, brilliant and liked to be by himself. He lived to a very old age of 100 or so. He was the first ham to get on SSB from India. Therein hangs a story of espionage, stolen secrets, cold war, politics and kleptomania. Most of the actors are now dead, so it can be told now.

I never met VU2NR, he rarely travelled. One evening at Paddy's shack, I was shooting the breeze with VU2RM, Ram, about my own SSB efforts. Ram was probably the most knowledgeable ham on SSB in India and his RM96 was widely duplicated. Paddy and Ram were trying to empty out a bottle of the Old Monk and I casually mentioned how we had to scrounge around for SSB lattice filters until Wes showed us how to build them ourselves. At that point, Ram unloaded this story to us:

VU2NR joined the Allies and worked as a radio mechanic with the RAF. After the war, he joined the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) and then finally the United Nations as a comms expert, he was in Aden for a while. He understood the radios well and he became a well known homebrewer. His most brilliant work was the NR60 (it is an SSB radio built around four CA3028 kind of mixers). It was the first SSB radio that I had built (and it worked!) but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Back in the 50s, ham shacks of India consisted of World War II surplus receivers and a self-built 807 transmitter driven by a VFO. There was a fair amount of buzz on the bands about SSB. The hams could occasionally pick up DX that was on SSB and easily resolved by the BC-348s  and the HROs but there was no way to build one. The QST was difficult to get your hands on but Raju had become a subscriber of the QST during his RAF days.

A QST sailed on a slow boat from the USA and landed up at the port on the east coast of India, Vizag and made its way to Raju's doorstep. Over weeks, he gathered parts and in the summer of 1955 he quietly came on 40 meters on SSB! This blew everyone away. Until now, one had only heard stories of SSB transmitters told by sailors of Sandra Maria Gracia after a few drinks to a bunch of hams clutching onto their 807s. It was as if Jesus had materialized!

VU2RM, Ram was not amused. He was a homebrewer with pride and honour. He could never be bested. He spent the next evening tuning on Raju's SSB up and down to note that the other sideband was missing and the carrier was gone. It sank into him that Raju had indeed beaten him to SSB. Ram worked at the Kakinada port, about 100 miles further down south on the east coast as the port radio engineer. He didn't sleep well. At 5 am, he got up, walked out and took a bus to Vizag where Raju lived. He was at Raju's door at 9 am. Raju was amused at the young guy and invited him in. They knew each other as rival homebrewers. There was tension in the air. Raju showed off his SSB transmitter in the front hall of his home. It was all over the place in about 3 or 4 boxes. There was the power supply, the PA, the ssb generator using a 2Q4 (a passive RC phasing network), a separate VFO box and a whole lot with wires running all over. In a corner was his stack of QSTs.

Raju's XYL called out for coffee and snacks (called 'Tiffin' in south Indian English) and Raju sauntered off to the kitchen to fetch his celebratory feast...

With alacrity and swiftness that only comes once in a lifetime, Ram, VU2RM, sprang to action. He darted to the QST collections, quickly found the one with the SSB transmitter on the cover, turned the pages to discover VU2NR's dog eared pages. He was staring at the circuit trying to memorize it. He realized that 2Q4's internal diagram had really odd values that he could never remember. So he did what James Bond, Bertie Wooster and Louvre thieves would have done. He rolled it up and slipped it into his pocket! (In those days, QST could be rolled and slipped into your trouser pockets, leading to wider dissemination of knowledge). He called out to Raju asking him to forget the refreshments as his bus was due back home. He legged it out and didn't stop until the bus stop. He hid around the bus yard hoping to not be caught by Raju. In the meantime, Raju, cursing the young upstart, drank both the filter coffee cups and left for work. Raju was unaware that the royal jewels were stolen.

VU2RM, Ram, started to work on his SSB radio over the next few days. He stopped going to work. At first, he figured out how to null the carrier using a twin triode modulator. Next, he fabricated the 2Q4 circuit. He sand papered lower value resistors until they read as close to the value as he could manage on his analog volt-ohm meter. He gave up on the exact capacitances and just soldered a bunch of the closest together. He had a crude 2Q4 equivalent. This, he dropped into his rat next circuit and an 'Almost' SSB signal emerged. He was probably having a sideband suppression of less than 15 dB at this point. It was suppressed and the carrier was nulled. He declared victory.

In the morning, Ram was on the band strutting off his SSB transmitter to the local gang. Graciously accepting the accolades from his fan club and extolling virtues of life on SSB to the lesser mortals. The news quickly spread over CW and AM of VU2RM as the second SSB station from India.

In the meantime, the atmosphere at VU2NR was tense. You could cut the air with a toggle switch. Raju had no idea how Ram had gotten the SSB. He carefully tuned around on his signal. He could pick up faint traces of the opposite sideband. Ram's carrier was also leaky. He decided that Ram was probably passing off his AM transmitter as a SSB. He said as much on air to his own devotees. Ram, ever watchful of his own reputation, heard this criticism and broke in, challenging Raju to prove that his was indeed not SSB. Raju's reaction was mixed. Now he wasn't sure. 

It was now Raju's turn to have a sleepless night. After his breakfast, he had had enough of confusion and he hauled his old scope and himself into the 8 am bus to Kakinada and showed up at Ram's doorstep! "Show me your radio" he said crisply.

For Ram it was his moment of crowning glory. He had brought Raju down to his shack! Raju plugged his scope into Ram's transmitter. He sniffed around the transmitter which was laid all over the table. "Where is your 2Q4?" he asked. Ram pointed to bunch of resistors and capacitors and Raju realized Ram's dog headed brilliance. He sat down, traced to the balancing pots (there would be two of them as this was a phasing transmitter). At this time, he decided to show Ram his greater prowess. He reached out to the carrier nulling pots, and tweaked them to minimum carrier (Ram was watching the oscilloscope with his mouth wide open). He told Ram that he had now fixed the carrier and then showed him how to adjust the RF phasing control for minimum by tuning to the opposite sideband on Ram's Bc 348. Having proved to Ram that he was a better homebrewer, he declared that now, Ram's transmitter was indeed SSB and not semi-AM. Raju retrieved his honor by being gracious and "mentoring" Ram.

 

They had coffee and snacks and it was time for Raju to leave, as Ram was showing Raju to the door, Raju's eye caught a QST on the shelf... he pulled it out and stared down at the QST with his own address neatly stickered on the QST's cover. He glared at Ram for a long time and turned away and left in a huff. Ram called after him down the street but Raju was gone.

VU2NR's last radio was built when he turned 90. It was the NR90 and it was built using NE612 chips. His hamming came to an abrupt end when one day his son dropped in unannounced only to find him perched on his tower of 30 feet height, fixing a fallen element of his self-made log periodic. The son was so horrified that he took away all the radios to save him from self-harm (this part of the story is unconfirmed).

 

My friend Sasi, VU2XZ, was close to him and he got the family to donate his callsign to a repeater that has been established in his memory. VU2NR lives on.

- f 

------------------------

Here is the link to the 1964 QST article.   VU2NR's article appears on page 19: 

https://www.worldradiohistory.com/INTERNATIONAL/QST/QST-1964-03.pdf